"Hurricane" warning tonight: Lanzarote, Fuerteventura

Just had a text from a friend whose mother is worried about her sister who called from Lanzarote tonight, apparently the Red Cross are on the streets telling everyone to go home immediately and lock up, someone even mentioned a "Hurricane" warning!

Looking at the INM website, they do have a Red Warning for Las Palmas region, which includes Lanzarote and Fuerteventura, forecasting strong to very strong thunderstorms, with 12 hour rainfall totals of up to 150mm. The 18Z NWS analysis shows one 45kt marine reading, and Hierro Airport on the westernmost island of La Palma has currently Force 6, but it just shows you how easy it is to cause widespread panic if you want to!!

Huracán or gale, I dont think it's the wind that's the problem, it's the rain. I see El Hierro had tremendous flooding yesterday, with over 300mm of rain washing away cars and animals in El Pinar. A waterspout caused some minor damage in Las Palmas too.

The INM's criteria for issuing a Red Alert take into account the "climatic frequency of the event in this region and therefore the public's preparedness for it"....so a Red in one place might only be Orange or Yellow somewhere else.

The worst affected island was El Hierro, which is the furthest southwest. It started raining there Friday afternoon and didn't stop until early Sunday morning, by which time it had dumped 500mm!!! of rain. It was complete total devestation in the town of El Pinar, where roads were washed away, houses buried, cars washed down the street, animals lost, but luckily no human casualties. The President Tomá Padrón called it a delue and the worst disaster in the island's history, even worse than Tropical Storm Delta 12 years ago. He is appealing for help in facing the difficult consequences in the coming months.

All the other islands got some rain but nowhere near the same scale - Santa Cruz de Tenerife 95.5mm, Arrecife (Lanzarote) 50.0mm.

It's also reporting that 178 specimens of a lizard unique to El Hierro have been lost in the storm... talk of irreparable damage and an ecological disaster. This does look like a very nasty weather event, which has gone unreported in the UK media as far as I've seen.